The Serpentine Road (26 page)

‘News? Oh yes, from my former employers: professional bull-shitters. Their sources unreliable, their interpretation debatable, what they tell me unqualifiable.’

De Vries knows where his daughters are. He rarely sees them, but knows nonetheless. If he did not, he appreciates how that would feel. He recognizes the powerlessness of ignorance: about a case, about a woman, about how he will get up the next day and actually function; he knows what it is like to have to move forward but to have no idea where. This is what they share.

‘You know how it feels to lose your wallet, or your keys? It’s shock. Your brain can’t comprehend that they are not where it is convinced they should be. The feeling that it can’t have happened, that your hand will feel it at any moment, and then realizing it’s been stolen. It’s like that for me every day.’

‘You can’t live like that. Do something to distract yourself. Get yourself a job. . .’

‘I’m unemployable. I was used to investigate people, assemble information, interrogate them, break them. What does that qualify me for?’

‘In this country,’ De Vries says, ‘a whole host of jobs: bank teller, Telkom helpline, Eskom engineer, plumber, council official, planning committee chairman . . .’

‘I get it.’

De Vries drains the bottle, gets up, wanders inside the house, up to the kitchen, into the fridge; he strolls back with the open bottle. Marantz runs his tongue along the long edge of the cigarette paper, wetting the gum, and begins to roll, back and forth, back and forth.

‘This stillness. It’s good news. Cold front’s coming. It’ll be raining tomorrow.’

De Vries says: ‘This contact: he knows what I told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about Lieutenant Sam Nkosi?’

‘His name’s out there.’

De Vries frowns.

‘How? Why? What did you think?’

‘Information appears from places you don’t even consider. And it breeds; the more you feed it, the more comes out. Besides . . .’ He lights the thick joint, inhales deeply, blows the smoke out in a thin stream which drifts slowly down the pool terrace and drops over the end of his lap pool, onto the mountainside. ‘. . . It’s quite usual: the first person who sees the victim dead is also the last person to see them alive.’

Number 14 Park Terrace is almost dark from the outside, only a dim light illuminates the porch. Don knocks and waits. Eventually, the calm, dour woman answers the door, watches him wipe his feet, leads him into the dark living area. She holds up her hand to stop him, walks on to the end of the room, stands behind the sofa where Lorna is engrossed in a television news report. She puts her hands on the girl’s shoulders, waits calmly. When the item finishes, Lorna switches off the set, looks up.

‘Yes, mother?’

‘The policeman is here. You remember we talked about it?’

Lorna rises and walks up to Don February, looks him up and down.

‘Please may I see your ID?’

‘You don’t know who I am?’

‘I know who you are supposed to be.’

Don smiles to himself, pleased that De Vries is not here. He will ignore the strangeness, do what she asks and it will not raise his heart-rate by half a beat; De Vries, he would already be fuming. He reaches into his inside pocket, hands her the ID. She steps back. Don places it on the back of the sofa. She takes it, studies it and him, returns it, and says: ‘What do you want to ask me now, Warrant Officer Donald February?’

Don wonders whether she will ask him to sit down but, instead, they both stand stiffly opposite one another, her mother a few steps away, still and silent.

‘You told me the last time you had seen Taryn Holt,’ Don says, ‘and that you had seen police everywhere. Did you see any police on the night of Thursday second and Friday third?’

‘The night the woman died.’

‘Yes.’

‘It wasn’t a question. I know,’ she says blankly. ‘I only watch between 10.30 and 11 p.m., unless there is something special to see. There was a policeman in a car, parked at the corner of Serpentine Road.’

Don nods, considers, asks: ‘Was is it a police car, or a police van?’

‘Neither. It was a silver BMW 3 Series. I compared it with other cars of the same make.’

‘So how did you know it was a policeman in the car?’

‘Because I have seen him before: six times. He often watches our road from his car. And, on the morning after the lady was killed, I saw him coming out of her house, talking with other policemen.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Black. He was a black man.’

‘Was he tall? Maybe a little under two metres?’

‘It is not possible to estimate his height from my window.’

‘But tall?’

‘He is taller than you; blacker than you.’

‘Would you recognize his face if you saw it again?’

‘Yes.’

Don produces the four pictures he showed to Judy Miles at the restaurant, lays them out on the back of the sofa. Even before he has finished, she points at the picture of Nkosi.

‘That is him.’

He looks at her.

‘You are certain?’

She stares back, says nothing.

‘What time did he arrive?’

‘10.52 p.m.’

He knows better than to question her timings.

‘Did you see him leave his vehicle?’

‘No.’

‘But you are certain it was him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you not tell me before that you had seen this man watching your road?’

‘You didn’t ask me.’

‘No,’ Don says ruefully, ‘I did not.’ He wonders what else to ask her; how to phrase the questions carefully.

‘And you stopped watching out of your window at 11 p.m.?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you did not look out again that night?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see the number plate?’

‘Of course.’ She gives him the license number: two letters, six numbers. He writes it down carefully.

‘You can remember that, too?’ he says.

‘Can’t you?’

He smiles at her.

‘No . . . Is it always the same car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Thank you.’

‘You are wearing the same suit as last time. Do you only own one suit?’

‘Two suits,’ Don says. ‘I have two.’

‘Are they both too big?’

‘They are.’

‘Will you catch who killed our neighbour?’

‘I think so. You may even have helped.’

‘Was it the man I saw watching our road?’

‘Maybe.’

Lorna looks at him suspiciously.

‘I don’t want my picture on the news. I don’t want to see myself.’

Don nods, bows gently towards her. She turns away from him, walks back to the sofa and turns the television back on. Don looks at Lorna’s mother.

‘Are you finished?’ she says.

‘It seems so.’

She leads the way to the front door. Don remembers his last visit.

Before he goes through it, he says: ‘Thank you, madam. Goodnight.’

He still receives no reply.

De Vries drives out of town on the N1 past Century City, the gaudy development of apartment blocks, hotels and shopping centres which views Table Mountain from afar, and turns onto the road heading north and then onto Koeberg Road, leading past the vast industrial areas north of Cape Town, past the twisted iron and steel of the oil refineries and power distribution centres. The streets here are dark, devoid of people – the air thick and heavy. He drives to what would once have been a little green space between the groups of low-cost bungalows, but which now is no more than a dumping ground, and finds a group of white guys sitting under a copse of three windblown, almost leafless trees. The scene is lit by the dull vomit-yellow glow of the one working streetlight. He watches them a moment, passing around a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.

Before they cleared the city centre of them, the
bergies
had always been there, in the Company Gardens, on Long Street, down by the docks. At first, when he had seen more of them, the sight of destitute whites – homeless, drunk, drug-addled – had shocked and disturbed him; it had stoked an innate, inherited resentment deep within him. Now, twenty-one years on from the formation of the ANC government, they are ubiquitous. De Vries feels sickened by the reversal of fortune, but knows it is a price to be paid; he knows that, if the seemingly meaningless split-second decisions of everyday life had been different, he too could have been amongst them.

He parks up fifty metres from them, pulls two cans of Amstel from a six-pack in a carrier bag in the passenger foot-well, gets out of his car and ambles slowly towards them. When he looks up, he can see that one of them has spotted him, like a look-out for a herd of wild-buck. Their grunting conversation ceases; one by one they turn to face him. He holds up the cans, sees heads tilt up, hope challenging suspicion. He nods at them, offers the cans. No one moves to take them.

‘I want to find a guy I worked with, long ago. Mike. Mike de Groot. You know him?’

They say nothing. He sees their eyes move from the alcohol to his face.

He says it again, this time in Afrikaans.

‘You police?’

‘
Ja
. Off duty. Looking for one of my guys, left long ago. His mates told me he needs my help. You know him? Mike de Groot?’

He produces the picture, holds it up, approaches them slowly and shows it to them.

‘The guy on the right there.’

De Vries watches each of them as he turns the picture, sees little in their crusted, sunburnt eyes, bloodshot and half-open.

One holds out his hands.

‘I’ve seen him. Stays out by the incinerator.’

De Vries stares at him, believes him, passes him the beers.

‘Where?’

The
bergie
gestures with his chin.

‘Past the garage, down Stella Road.’

De Vries nods.

‘You have any food, man?’

De Vries shakes his head.

‘Some change for food?’

‘No. Beer’s all I got.’

He watches them in the rear-mirror as he pulls away. They are sharing the cans around the seven or eight of them, each taking a gulp and passing it on again. The pool of banana-yellow light fades as he reaches the turn back onto the main road. He wonders what those men did in their previous lives: factory workers, warehousemen; maybe SAPS. He finds his teeth gritted and his fingers tight on the wheel.

He locates Stella Road, drives past the now deserted warehouses and retail units, the sad, windblown date palms, their fronds browning in the endless summer heat. On the corner, the inside of a battered Toyota is illuminated by an orange glow. Four coloured kids are burning or cooking something, smoking and drinking. A night out. He turns left, then right, and heads towards the hulking form of the incinerator. Bungalows have become breezeblock shacks with corrugated tin roofs. Most are dark, but some display a bare bulb behind plastic-sheeting windows.

He pulls over by an illuminated shack boasting a tiny stoep, made from a continuation of iron sheeting, supported by three narrow wooden pillars. Two older men sit on a threadbare sofa smoking, gazing out across the narrow road to the lines of shacks opposite them.

De Vries gets out, pulls two more cans out with him, calls out to them in Afrikaans. The gruff reply is welcoming enough, and he approaches them. They both stand up, shake his hand. When he offers beer, he is invited to sit with them. They take the beers and open them; one offers his to De Vries. He takes a sip, tells them he must drive, hands it back. He offers them cigarettes, which are accepted eagerly.

De Vries sits back on the folding plastic chair, reflects that he is a stranger who has been welcomed into their home, and says nothing. There is no breeze now; in between the plumes of blue smoke which hang before him, he can smell the men: stale sweat and piss. He almost senses that their clothes are made brittle by the excretions. He takes a deep draw on his cigarette, lets the smoke out through loose lips, re-inhaling it through his nostrils, fighting nausea. The neighbourhood is quiet but for a distant yet insistent mechanical whirring and the sound of, maybe, fork-lift trucks coming and going.

One speaks; it makes him jump.

‘You a cop?’

De Vries smiles; he knows that his demeanour is a badge.

‘
Ja
.’

The man holds up his can as a toast.

‘You’re all right.’ He nods at De Vries sagely.

‘I’m Selwyn.’ He thumbs the other man. ‘And Danie.’

‘Vaughn . . .’ He sits forward. ‘I’m looking for someone. A guy from the force years ago. Mate of his said he needs my help . . .’

‘You didn’t come here for the view.’

De Vries smiles, asks: ‘What did you do? Your job?’

The silent man shrugs; Selwyn says: ‘You know Pinter’s factory? I was foreman there, in the packing.’

‘What happened?’

‘Not enough blacks, they said. They had to have blacks. It’s the law now. You think there’s work for guys our age? Place’ll be closed down soon. They fucked it up.’

‘Same in the SAPS.’

‘They close you down too?’

‘Trying to. Guys like me anyway.’

De Vries pulls out the picture of Mike de Groot, shows it to them. Selwyn passes it to Danie. He looks, shakes his head, tilts the beer can to his lips. Selwyn takes it back, brings it close up to his face, studies it.

‘I’ve seen him.’

‘Mike de Groot?’

‘
Ja
. Mike.’

‘He stays here?’

‘
Ja
. Down there. I’ll take you.’ He gives back the picture, takes another draft of beer, sits back, waves his arm shakily from his left shoulder out into the darkness. ‘Places like this all over the country now. Outside of Jo’burg, Pretoria, Durban, all over the suburbs. Whole families of white folks without work, no place to stay. It’s unbelievable.’ He looks at De Vries, still sitting forward. ‘You want to go to Mike’s now?’

‘
Ja
.’

Selwyn pulls himself to his feet, steadies himself by holding onto the wooden pillar supporting the roof. De Vries looks down, sees that the man wears boots from which socks, then toes, stick out. He feels strangely ashamed, and follows Selwyn as he slowly shuffles the few steps to the pavement.

De Vries holds up a hand to Danie.

‘Goodnight.’